


Not Her Bed

by Flutiebear



Series: Free As We'll Ever Be [2]
Category: Dragon Age
Genre: Angst, Grief, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-All That Remains
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-02
Updated: 2011-10-02
Packaged: 2017-10-24 06:25:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/260135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flutiebear/pseuds/Flutiebear
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's been two months since Leandra died, and Garrett still can't even open the door to her room. Dark, dark, dark. Written after a particularly awful weekend cleaning out a dead woman's apartment. Not for fluff seekers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not Her Bed

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Place Your Hands on My Hope](https://archiveofourown.org/works/256809) by [runsinthefamily](https://archiveofourown.org/users/runsinthefamily/pseuds/runsinthefamily). 



Two months after her death, and he can’t still even open the door.

Because inside is the bed.

It’s not _her_ bed.

Her bed is a oaken sleigh bed back in Lothering that creaked when he sat on it. When Bethany, Carver and he all piled on, it would sag in the middle until it brushed the hardwood floor beneath.

Her bed smelled of river-washed, sun-dried sheets and the lavender sprigs she slipped under Malcolm’s pillow. Of their father’s beard and sweat. Of her floury skin and hair. Sometimes he and Dog would roll around on the coverlet and inhale, breathing in the essence of the comforting and the familiar. Bethany caught them once. She yelled at them for messing up Mother’s sheets with their muddy shoes and paws.

The Darkspawn have probably burnt her bed black by now.

Unlike Carver, he is old enough to remember the other beds, too: the haylofts of South Reach, the Denerim cots that smelled like woodchips – even the nit-infested straw pallet in Alamar, in the room that smelled like spilled piss and, he would only realize decades later, choke-damp.

He wonders if any of those beds survived, either.

He hopes they didn’t.

Because if the bed in Lothering didn’t make it, then none of them should.

Including this one.

This bed was only a place she slept for a little while. Like a campground. Like a fainting couch. 

It’s a profanity that this bed, of all beds, should endure.

That it should be all that remains.

He wishes it would fall off the edges of Thedas.

Maybe it already has.

But he won’t look.

Truth is, he has only been in the room once since—

Three weeks after, he couldn’t find Dog. He’d searched everywhere: in the cellars, under the four-poster, by Sandal’s favorite enchanting table.

Then Bodhan said he’d opened the door. _To air things out_ , he’d said gently.

He found Dog on the bed.

Asleep.

Nose buried in her dressing gown, which had been bunched on her bed, one arm dangling off the side, just as it had been the night that—

As if nothing had changed.

As if this were the same bed from Lothering.

 _Her_ bed.

His vision exploded. He couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe—

It was the only time he’d ever hit Dog.

He screamed at him to _get out, you stupid fucking mutt, get off the bed, you’ll ruin it with your muddy paws, she’s never coming back you sad sack of shit, get out, get out, get out._

Dog had walked away. Not run. Walked.

Leaving him to look at what he had done. At the empty space he had created.

So he looked.

 _Really_ looked.  

The crisply-made bed, a cobweb swaying across the corner canopy.

A dingy, soot-streaked portrait of Grandmother Amell leaning against the wall.

A vase of dried lilies on her desk.

The smell of lavender and dust and _her._

He collapsed in front of her hope chest then. Sobbed until he couldn’t find the tears any more.

He doesn’t remember what happened after that.

Anders, he thinks, had found him. Or maybe Sandal.

Or maybe Dog.

All he remembers is a warm body nudging under his arms, tugging him back to his room.

But it’s not his room.

His room is back in Lothering.

His room has tick marks on the door jamb, measuring out growth spurts. It has a patched up hole in the wall where Bethany, of all people, had thrown a Fist of the Maker in anger.

His room had a loose floorboard where he kept Carver's sketches of naked people that he'd sometimes throw away. Nobody knew how well Carver could draw—except him. He wonders if Carver still draws, if he even has the time.

And his room had _his_ bed. A too-short straw pallet, covered by a quilt with a windmill on it, with seven patches, each of which he stitched himself. Bethany would crawl into it when she had nightmares, because she knew her big brother would protect her, in and out of the Fade, and sometimes Carver would snuggle in too, because he wanted to protect her too.

This is not his room. This is not his bed.

His room had a parchment hanging on the wall that Carver once drew.

It says “King Carver, 8. Princess Bethany, 8. Ser Garrett, 15. Mom + Dad.”

Garrett and Bethany both have red hands.

Dad has blue hands.

Healing hands.

The sun has a happy face with Dalish tattoos on it.

In the foreground King Cailan is riding a dragon that looks like a mabari.

That is the only room he wants.

That is the only room he has ever wanted.

But this is not the room he has.

This room has an ornate canopy bed that cost too much, and has a lute he doesn’t know how to play, and a chamber-pot that always smells, and a wardrobe so cavernous and empty that burglars can hide in it, because he has stuffed everything, everything that matters, into a green chest barely two hand-spreads across. 

His room doesn’t even have Anders’ coat in it.

But the paw prints remain.

They’re all that remains.

He can’t open the door. No matter how hard he tries. Or doesn’t try.

One day he will.

One day.

Maybe tomorrow.

Maybe then he’ll open the door and begin to pack her belongings away, to compartmentalize her life into bags and bins and boxes and trash and keep and trash and keep and won’t be needing that anymore.

Maybe then he’ll divide the wheat from the chaff, and this dress from that necklace, and that book from this portrait, and stuff everything else that ever was or had been his mother into open chests that, if he’s feeling ironic, he’ll then donate to the Chantry; or maybe he’ll just burn it all, in a great angry purple fire that reaches to the heavens and consumes all of this rotten city—or maybe he’ll just stick it all in the basement storage, never to be brought out again until a new generation of Amell grandchildren has to fight their way through the wine cellars and slavers and the forsaken past  to find her will and what is rightfully theirs.

He laughs.

Like that would happen.

He and Anders will never have children.

Too many causes. Too many callings.

After he is gone, nothing will remain.

Nothing can remain.

 _Your mother was not her possessions,_ Aveline had told him. _You can’t hold onto her by holding onto them._

What would she know about it?

Aveline had been lucky.

Wesley had died in Ferelden.

He’d been one of the lucky ones, too.

She’d taken nothing beyond the armor on her back. No possessions, no dresses, no bonnets, no life to box up.

Just a shield and a wedding ring.

Easy to stuff into a barracks cubby, and never look at again.

 _I will help you,_ she’d said. _You shouldn’t do this alone. You don’t have to do this alone._

She doesn’t understand.

She can’t understand.

Because this is not her bed.

These are not her dresses.

These are not her things.

How can he pack up a life that wasn’t hers?

The truth is, she’d died the moment the Darkspawn invaded Lothering. They all had.

Maybe even earlier.

Because what has magic touched that it hasn’t spoiled?

 _Keep them safe, Garrett_ , he’d said. _You’re the man of the house now. I trust you._

 _I promise, Dad._

But the tighter he holds, the more easily they slip through his fingers.

Like water. Like smoke.

Like a dead man’s promises in the deep.

Some father Malcolm was.

They all turn to blood magic in the end.

They all leave him in the end.

He is all that remains.

Him—and his failures.

It’s only a matter of time before he opens that door and never comes out again.

“Garrett?”

The voice is far away. He’s not sure where it’s coming from. He can’t see anything, just the fireplace in front of him. His eyes burn. He can’t remember the last time he blinked, or exhaled.

“Is that you, Anders?”

“It’s me,” says the weary voice. Always weary, never at peace.

A hand falls on his shoulder, heavy, warm, strong.

Blue.

A healing hand.

“I don’t want to live in a world without my mother, Anders. I don’t know how.”

“Oh, Garrett.”

“She was all I had left.”

“You have me.”

He snorts.  Anders was never there in the first place. This love has always been on loan from Justice, like a library book. He knows that eventually, one day, he’ll have to give Anders back.

Anders is quiet for a long time. “Well,” says the hurt voice. “You also have Carver.”

Carver, well—He hasn’t heard from or seen his little brother since—

Carver showed up for the funeral. He didn’t speak, only looked at him once, and the things he found there in his brother's eyes made him too ashamed to hold that gaze for long.

He was once Ser Garrett.

Now who is he?

 “Stay here tonight, Anders.”

“I will.”

“Don’t leave me.”

“I won’t.”

“You promised you’d never leave. Right here, you said. Right here ‘til the day we die.”

“ _You_ said that, Garrett.”

“But you did promise.”

Then Anders kneels in front of him, takes his hands in his and braces his stubbled chin on his lap, and it reminds him of when Dog begs for pets.

“I love you, Garrett. And she loved you. Loves you still.”

“That’s not good enough. It’s never good enough. It doesn’t keep the people I love alive. It just makes them leave me faster.” The words he’s held back so long flood out of him now, a torrent that can’t be stopped. “I should have done more. I should have been there more. Why didn’t I see it? The moment she told me she was courting again, I should have been there to stop him and to protect her. He told me to protect her. He trusted me. They _all_ trusted me—“

“Look at me, Garrett.”

He looks.

Peering back at him are beautiful honey eyes, eyes the color of autumn, of fire, of the bark of cinnamon trees that grew just outside Lothering. Eyes warm and shining with unspilled tears.

“I promise. Here and now. ’Til the day I die, Garrett. Til the day I die.”

He doesn’t see Anders’s eyes change color, or his skin crack apart, but he does smell the thick ozone stench that indicates Justice has flared within. It hangs in the air like incense.

“Everyone around me dies.”

“Everyone dies, Garrett.” Anders raises a hand to his cheek. A blue hand. A healing hand. “But that doesn’t mean they leave us. The love we share, that remains. That always remains.”

“I will never leave you, Anders.”

“Nor I you.”

He falls into Anders’ arms. And falls, and falls, and never stops falling.

 _Maybe one day I’ll open the door._

 _Maybe tomorrow._

But deep inside him, a voice calls out.

It says: _You never will._

It sounds like her voice.  And Carver’s. And Bethany’s. And Dad’s.

It’s a voice that sounds like home.


End file.
